Reiseskildringer

The Border is a book about Russia and Russian history without its author ever entering Russia itself; a book about being the neighbour of that mighty, expanding empire throughout history. It is a chronicle of the colourful, exciting, tragic and often unbelievable histories of these bordering nations, their cultures, their people, their landscapes.

Forfatter: Erika Fatland
Utgitt: 2017
Antall Sider: 612
Språk: Engelsk

This volume is not a guide of where to stay and what to do, rather it is a collection of writing that aims to invest the traveller with a cultural and historical background to Croatia, which will give life and meaning into the sights, sounds and tastes that the traveller will experience.

• Publisert: 2006
  
• Antall sider: 250
• Innbinding: Heftet
• Språk: Engelsk
• ISBN: 9780907871897

På vandring uten esel i Cevennene er en rik, underholdende og underfundig bok, i dialog med en av litteraturhistoriens største fortellere Rober Louis Stevenson.

Robert Louis Stevenson er kanskje mest kjent som forfatter av klassikerne Skatten på sjørøverøya og Dr. Jekyll og Mr. Hyde. Men han har også skrevet det som i dag regnes som en klassiker i friluftslitteraturen: På vandring med et esel i Cevennene utkom i 1879. I boken, som var en av Stevensons første, reflekterer han over den tolv dager lange turen han gikk gjennom det sørfranske landskapet, menneskene han møtte, og erfaringene han gjorde seg som eseldriver.

I 2017 får Alexander Leborg i oppdrag å oversette Robert Louis Stevensons klassiker På vandring med et esel i Cevennene. Helt siden Leborg leste boken for første gang, har han drømt om å komme til dette landskapet og gå den samme turen. Som ledd i forberedelsene velger han å gå i forfatterens fotspor. Leborg tar selv dagboksnotater underveis. Han er ingen erfaren vandringsmann, men hans betraktninger om livet på landeveien er kloke, entusiastiske og fulle av beundring for turen Stevenson tok nesten 140 år tidligere.

• Forfatter: Alexander Leborg
• Publisert: 2019
• Innbinding: Innbundet
• Språk: Norsk bokmål
• ISBN: 9788202608286

2,500 years ago, the city of Syracuse on the eastern coast of Sicily was, for the Ancient Greeks, one of the centres of the classical world. It was in Syracuse that Aeschylus premiered his plays, and to Syracuse that Plato would visit from Athens, where the tyrant Dionysius bought Euripides's lyre at auction, and the languishing nymph Arethusa hid in the papyrus grove. Living in the city, the poet Joachim Sartorius learned that this history and myth is still present today.

At Sartorius's side we walk with nymphs and cyclops through the old town of Ortigia, and meet the people of the city; its notables, police officers, artists, and barbers. Unravelling the depths of Sicilian history and bringing the juxtaposition, superimposition, and commingling of cultures, styles, and attitudes to life, Sartorius shows a city of ancient luminosity, bringing us, through the baroque, to the contemporary world.

• Forfatter: Joachim Sartorius
• Publisert: Okt. 2024
• Antall sider: 156
• Innbinding: Innbundet
• Språk: Engelsk
• ISBN: 9781914982125

WINNER OF THE NATIONAL GEOGRAPHIC TRAVELLER AWARD FOR BEST TRAVEL BOOKSHORTLISTED FOR THE STANFORD DOLMAN TRAVEL BOOK OF THE YEAR AWARD'Monisha Rajesh has chosen one of the best ways of seeing the world. Never too fast, never too slow, her journey does what trains do best. Getting to the heart of things.

Prepare for a very fine ride' Michael PalinFrom the cloud-skimming heights of Tibet’s Qinghai railway to silk-sheeted splendour on the Venice Simplon-Orient-Express, Around the World in 80 Trains is a celebration of the glory of train travel and a witty and irreverent look at the world. Packing up her rucksack – and her fiancé, Jem – Monisha Rajesh embarks on an unforgettable adventure that takes her from London’s St Pancras station to the vast expanses of Russia and Mongolia, North Korea, Canada, Kazakhstan, and beyond. The journey is one of constant movement and mayhem, as the pair strike up friendships and swap stories with the hilarious, irksome and ultimately endearing travellers they meet on board, all while taking in some of the earth’s most breathtaking views.

• 2020
• Forfatter: Monisha Rajesh

After eight years living in Copenhagen, an English journalist, driven by a passion for languages and mountains, finally rebels. With little more than an assortment of Earl Grey teabags, Danish candles and a map, Georgina Howard abandons her all-too-cosy, cinnamon-scented lifestyle and drives south. The journey leads to wild and craggy landscapes in the Basque Pyrenees on the French/Spanish border, where place names are written in a bizarre, foreign tongue full of 'x's and 'z's.

Losing her heart to this beautiful land and her pride to the inscrutability of the language, Howard moves into an isolated barn in a mountain hamlet. While pagan festivals reverberate through the valleys, her Basque neighbours - farmers, shepherds, a gravedigger and a champion female lumberjack - observe her, bemused. Only when her daughter, Marion, is born - after an unsuccessful relationship with an eccentric Basque miller - do Howard's neighbours drop their reserve and welcome her into their homes.

Taking Marion's upbringing upon themselves, they fatten her up on spicy Basque sausages and black bean stews, teach her Basque nursery rhymes and train her to milk sheep. Meanwhile, Howard converts a barn into the headquarters of an international business providing walking, culture and language tours. Resigned to the ineptitude of their new neighbour, with patience and amusement, the locals tow her car out of ditches and teach her how to stack wood, catch mice, unblock septic tanks and drink wine from a leather gourd.

In the Footsteps of Smugglers follows the adventures of an outsider: a single mother, linguist, cosmopolitan nomad and cultural chameleon who paradoxically makes her home among an indigenous people deeply rooted in their land, with a language and culture dating back to Stone-Age times. Unwittingly, she repays their hospitality by luring anti-terrorist squads, blackmailers and spies into their midst as the dramatic past of the Basque Country proves to have unexpected and far-reaching consequences. An inspiring, humorous travel memoir, Bradt's In the Footsteps of Smugglers weaves behind-the-scenes vignettes of daily rural life and historical research to produce authentic insights on all things Basque, threaded with a rhapsody on the theme of identity.

• Forfatter: Georgina Howard
• Publisert: Jul. 2024
• Innbinding: Heftet
• Språk: Engelsk
• ISBN: 9781804692110

A journey to find Norway's supposed bliss makes for a comic travelogue that asks, seriously, what makes Norwegians so damn happy-and does it translate? Norway is usually near or at the top of the World Happiness Report. But is it really one of the happiest countries on Earth? Eric Dregni had his doubts. Years ago he and his wife had lived in this country his great-great-grandfather once fled.

When their son Eilif was born there, the Norwegian government paid for the birth, gave them $5,000, and deposited $150 into their bank account every month, but surely happiness was more than a generous health care system. What about all those grim months without sun? When Eilif turned fifteen, father and son decided to go back together and investigate. For the Love of Cod is their droll report on the state of purported Norwegian bliss.

Arriving in May, a month of festivals and eternal sun, the Dregnis are thrust into Norway at its merriest-and into the reality of the astronomical cost of living, which forces them to find lodging with friends and relatives. But this gives them an inside look at the secrets to a better life. It's not the massive amounts of money flowing from the North Sea oil fields but how these funds are distributed that fuels the Norwegian version of democratic socialism-resulting in miniscule differences between rich and poor.

Locals introduce them to the principles underlying their avowed contentment, from an active environmentalism that translates into flyskam (flight shame), which keeps Norwegians in the family cabin for the long vacations prescribed by law and charges a 150 percent tax on gas guzzlers (which, Eilif observes, means more Teslas seen in one hour than in a year in Minnesota!). From a passion for dugnad or community volunteerism and sakte or "slow," a rejection of the mad pace of modernity, to the commodification of Viking history and the dark side of Black Metal music that turns the idea of quaint, traditional Norway upside down, this idiosyncratic father and son tour lets readers, free of flyskam, see how, or whether, Norwegian happiness translates.

• Forfatter: Eric Dregni
• Publisert: 2021
• Innbinding: Heftet
  
• Språk: Engelsk
• ISBN: 9781517915728

Taking the Risk is Hilary Bradt's engaging, insightful, amusing and sometimes alarming memoir about serendipitous adventures in travel and publishing. A travel industry trail-blazer who co-founded Bradt Guides, Hilary looks back on 50 years of escapades, surprises, mishaps, disasters. and success.

From her first solo trip aged three (on a British beach), she revisits six decades of hitchhiking, feeding the travel habit by working abroad, and starting a successful travel publishing company where knowing nothing proved a surprising asset. Barely into her twenties, Hilary Bradt thumbed lifts around the Middle East for three months before spending four years working and travelling in the US. Between 1973 and 1976 Hilary explored, and worked in, South America and Africa with her then husband George, often journeying through literally uncharted territory in their quest to find new hiking routes.

The discovery of an ancient trail to Machu Picchu unexpectedly inspired their first guidebook. From 1977 the pair wrote several backpacking guides, and set up Bradt Guides. This was just as well, because Hilary's career in occupational therapy ended when potential employers noticed that time taken off for travel exceeded periods of employment.

During the 1980s, Bradt Guides grew and became successful - but that didn't stop Hilary travelling, including as a tour leader. Join Hilary as she relives in detail the rigours of travel before the days of the internet or mobile phones, including smuggling her husband across an international border and frequently getting arrested despite efforts to be responsible tourists. Learn how Hilary's lack of experience made the early days of publishing quite unlike those of any other successful publisher.

Laugh (or cry) at Hilary's ability to court media disasters while seeking the limelight, including waving around condoms on BBC TV. Taking the Risk comprises the collected stories of an inveterate, intrepid traveller whose joyous exploration of the world has transformed the lives of hundreds of thousands of people - anyone who has owned a Bradt Guide. A unique book from a unique individual, it will delight anyone who has ever travelled or ever wondered what goes into making the books we read.

• Forfatter: Hilary Bradt
• Publisert: 2024
• Innbinding: Innbundet
• Antall sider: 320
• ISBN: 9781804691847

 Snart 40 år er gått siden formann Maos død. Siden den gang har vi fått et klarere bilde av hva som skjedde under hans styre. Modige kinesere har stått fram med sine beretninger, og forskere har fått adgang til arkiver som lenge har vært lukket. Bildet som avtegner seg, er skremmende. Millioner av mennesker sultet i hjel. Størst var sulten under Maos såkalte Store sprang fra 1958 til 1961. Nyere forskning tyder på at hans hårreisende forsøk på massemobilisering endte med minst 45 millioner menneskers død.

Noen år senere ga Mao støtet til Kulturrevolusjonen, som kom til å vare i ti år. Igjen ble et uhyggelig stort antall mennesker ofret på revolusjonens alter.



I Maos rike - En lidelseshistorie forteller den kritikerroste forfatteren Torbjørn Færøvik om hva som skjedde under Mao. Hans baserer sin veldokumenterte fremstilling på nyere forskning og enkeltmenneskers skildringer. Mesterlig og intenst redegjør Færøvik for konsekvensene av den brutale politikken , samtidig som han forklarer hvorfor det kunne skje. Nettopp derfor er Maos rike - En lidelseshistorie en særdeles viktig bok.

• Forfattere: Torbjørn Færøvik
• Publisert: 2014
• Antall sider: 628
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Empires have collided here, cultures have clashed. Buddhist India claimed it from the south, Islam put down roots in its western approaches, Mongols and Manchus rode in from the north, and, from the east, China continues to absorb what it prefers not to call Tibet. Hunters have decimated its wildlife and mountaineers have bagged its peaks.

Today, machinery gouges minerals out of its rock. Roughly the size of Europe, the region is one of the most seismically active on the planet. Summers bring avalanches, rainfall triggers landslides and winters obliterate trails.

Glaciers retreat, rivers change course and whole lakes quietly evaporate. To some, Himalaya is an otherworldly realm, profoundly life-changing, yet forbidding and forbidden. It has mesmerised scholars and mystics, sportsmen and spies, pilgrims and mapmakers who have mingled with the farmers and traders on the Roof of the World.

Himalaya is the story of one of the last great wildernesses and, in particular, of the bizarre discoveries and improbable achievements of its pioneers. Ranging from botany to trade, from the Great Game to todays geopolitics, John Keay draws on a lifetime of exploration and study to enlighten and delight with this lively biography of a region in crisis.

• Forfatter: John Keay
• Publisert: Okt. 2023
• Antall sider: 432
• ISBN: 9781408891162

Emilia, an artist, arrives in Rome alone. What was supposed to be a romantic trip has, with the sudden end of her relationship, become a solitary one.

Six days lie ahead. She wanders the streets, surrendering herself to the music, food and beauty of the city. But when she meets John, an American living out a seemingly idyllic existence in Rome, their instant connection challenges how she sees her past, her family and herself.

As their intimacy deepens, can Emilia begin to imagine life anew?Visceral, decadent and deeply evocative, Six Days in Rome is a novel about reckoning with complex pasts and choices made - and finding what you didn't know you were looking for.

• Forfatter: Francesca Giacco
• Publisert: August 2022
• Utgave: 1. utgave
• Antall sider: 288
  
• ISBN: 9781472295859

Lisbon's charm is legendary, but its vibrant 2,000-year history is not widely known, from its Roman legacy to its centuries under Moorish rule. Its journey from port town to Portugal's capital was not always smooth sailing-in 1755 the city was devastated by the largest earthquake ever to strike modern Europe, followed by a catastrophic tsunami and a six-day inferno that turned sand to glass. Barry Hatton unearths these forgotten memories in a vivid account of Lisbon's colourful past and present, bringing to life the 1147 siege during the Iberian reconquista, the assassination of the king, the founding of a republic and the darkness of a modern dictatorship.

He reveals the rich, international heritage of Portugal's metropolis-the gateway to the Atlantic and the unrivalled Queen of the Sea.

• Forfatter: Barry Hatton
• Publisert: Juli 2018
• Antall sider: 280
• Innbinding: Heftet
• Språk: Engelsk
• ISBN: 9781849049979

A new, updated version of the celebrated 1968 title, Galapagos: Islands of Birds, by the renowned late ornithologist Bryan Nelson, with additional, previously unpublished reminiscences and lively and irreverent memories from his wife June. This timely reissue breathes new life into a classic work of natural history that will appeal to bird-lovers and Galapagos-lovers alike. It is as memorable for its groundbreaking descriptions of Galapagos wildlife as for June's naked appearance in the News of the World accompanied by a quote from the Duke of Edinburgh.

In 1964 the late Bryan Nelson, a zoologist, and his wife June spent a year living on two uninhabited, waterless Galapagos islands studying the three species of booby ('we couldn't resist also studying the great frigatebird and waved albatross, too' says June). Bryan's book, Galapagos: Islands of Birds was published in 1968 and, although by necessity a scientific study, his light touch and the extraordinary hardships and delights of living in total isolation with no means of rescue should things go wrong, make it an exceptionally good read. Now, nearly 60 years later, June Nelson has extracted the story of that extraordinary year and complemented it with her own recollections.

The couple's research and findings remain relevant and interesting, so plenty of wildlife descriptions are retained, but it is the mischievous mocking birds and friendly sea lions which will captivate the reader as much as the famous blue-footed boobies and waved albatrosses. At the end of their stay on Hood, when their clothes were literally in tatters and they went barefoot, they had news of the imminent visit of The Duke of Edinburgh and the Royal Yacht Britannia. June's description of this visit and their lunch on board with Prince Philip, make a surreal ending to a year of deteriorating food: 'Now our flour had around 50 maggots or beetles per pound...

• Forfattere: Bryan og June Nelson
• Publisert: April 2022
• Innbinding: Heftet
• Språk: Engelsk
• ISBN: 9781784778859

Jon Krakauer's Into Thin Air is the true story of a 24-hour period on Everest, when members of three separate expeditions were caught in a storm and faced a battle against hurricane-force winds, exposure, and the effects of altitude, which ended in the worst single-season death toll in the peak's history.

In March 1996, Outside magazine sent veteran journalist and seasoned climber Jon Krakauer on an expedition led by celebrated Everest guide Rob Hall. Despite the expertise of Hall and the other leaders, by the end of summit day, eight people were dead. Krakauer's book is at once the story of the ill-fated adventure and an analysis of the factors leading up to its tragic end. Written within months of the events it chronicles, Into Thin Air clearly evokes the majestic Everest landscape.

As the journey up the mountain progresses, Krakauer puts it in context by recalling the triumphs and perils of other Everest trips throughout history. The author's own anguish over what happened on the mountain is palpable as he leads readers to ponder timeless questions.

One of the inspirations for the major motion picture Everest, starring Jake Gyllenhaal and Keira Knightley.

• Forfatter: Jon Krakauer
• Publisert: 2024
• Innbinding: Heftet
• Språk: Engelsk
• Antall sider: 352
• ISBN: 9781035038558

This is the story of how Thor Heyderdahl and five other men crossed the Pacific Ocean on a balsa-wood raft in an extraordinary bid to prove Heyderdahl's theory that the Polynesians undertook the same feat on such a craft over 1000 years ago.

• Forfatter: Thor Heyerdahl
• Publisert: Juli 1996
• Innbinding: Heftet
• Språk: Engelsk
• ISBN: 9780006550334

'Don't send him to Torremolinos; it's not his kind of tundra.' Such was the mantra of The Sunday Times when considering assignments for Brian Jackman, for whom deserts, rain forests and mountain ranges have always been more enticing habitats. After decades spent travelling and writing about the places and wildlife that have inspired him, one of the world's most experienced naturalists has turned his focus onto the story of his inspirational life. 'This is no ordinary autobiography', he says.

West with the Light sweeps through Jackman's wartime evacuation, grammar school, Soho jazz clubs of the '50s and the navy to a career in travel journalism to which his first marriage gave way before he found a new, true and more lasting love that abides to this day in his beloved rural Dorset. Beginning with memories of Edwardian London and the growth of suburbia, it provides a vivid portrayal of post-war travel and the rise of a new sort of tourism - ecotourism - set against the background of the most turbulent decades the world has ever known. Through it all shines Jackman's lifelong love of nature, instilled by childhood holidays in the West country and the stories that led to his passion for Africa and the big cats that that still walk through his life and dreams.

Rippling across continents with Jackman's natural charm and hallmark stylish prose, his recollections include lively first-hand encounters with pioneering wildlife conservationists like George and Joy Adamson, Iain and Saba Douglas-Hamilton, Richard Leakey, Gavin Maxwell and Jonathan Scott. Travellers, wildlife enthusiasts, writers and anyone with a love of adventure will adore this book.

• Forfatter: Brian Jackman
• Publisert: August 2021
• Innbinding: Heftet
• Språk: Engelsk
• Antall sider: 256
• ISBN: 9781784778361

Nominert til Bokhandlerprisen 2011
Den norske zoologen, veterinæren og skarpskytteren Karl Iver Lyngvin blir headhuntet til CORAC, en forskningsstasjon i Kongos regnskog der et tyvetalls andre forskere driver studier på hvordan regnskogens flora og fauna påvirkes av klimaendringene. Sammen med den unge australske entomologen Zoe Wildt opplever Karl Iver noe som kan komme til å få svært dramatiske konsekvenser. Ikke bare for Karl Iver, men for hele klodens fremtid. I Gert Nygårdshaugs nye roman knyttes ubestridelige fakta og forfatterens grundige research sammen til en fiksjon som blir et høyaktuelt og spenningsfylt drama. Chimera er en klassisk Nygårdshaug-roman med sterke thriller-elementer og med et tema som allerede i nær framtid kan bli uhyggelig aktuelt.

Den unge kvinnen reiste seg opp og stirret, gned sand fra øyne og kinn og stirret; hun så maltrakterte kropper, kroppsdeler og blod, det dampet rødt fra den varme sanden og riksene skrek hest på den blå himmelen, hun vendte seg bort for ikke å se mer, men oppdaget plutselig en bevegelse midt i smuget; en av soldatene levde! han kom krypende mot henne med blodig ansikt og den ene foten avrevet, hun krøket seg sammen i redsel og trakk odooji-kniven fra sliren, det blanke stålet blinket...


I Afrodites basseng har borgerkriger, voldsomme demonstrasjoner og teknologisk sammenbrudd ført frostmannen Jonar Snefang og hans sønn Erlan til en avsidesliggende bygd i Norge. En dag kjenner plutselig Jonar en foruroligende lukt og han får tildelt en mystisk kiste som blant annet inneholder et kart over Sahara og en gammel bok med en gåte. Samtidig drømmer Jonar om den unge kvinnen Ooni som vandrer i ørkenen...

Utgitt: 2018
Forlag: Cappelen Damm
Innbinding: Paperback
Språk: Norsk Bokmål
Sider: 367

The Canadian subarctic is a world of forest, prairie, and muskeg; of rainbow trout, moose, and caribou; of Indian hunters and trappers. It is also a world of boomtowns and bars, oil rigs and seismic soundings; of white energy speculators, ranchers, and sports hunters. Brody came to this dual world with the job of "mapping" the lands of northwest British Columbia as well as the way of life of a small group of Beaver Indians with a viable hunting economy living in the path of a projected oil pipeline. The result is Maps and Dreams, Brody's account of his extraordinary eighteen-month journey through the world of a people who have no intention of vanishing into the past.

In this beautifully written book, readers go on a moose hunt; trap beaver; mourn at a funeral; drink in white bars; visit camps, cabins, and traplines by pickup truck, on horseback, and on foot. Brody's powerful commentary also retraces the history of the ever-expanding white frontier from the first eighteenth-century explorer to the wildest corporate energy dreams of the present day. In the process, readers see how Indian dreams and white dreams, Indians maps and white maps, collide.

• Forfatter: Hugh Brody
• Publisert: 2002
  
• Språk: Engelsk
• ISBN: 9780571209675